


Olivia pulls the trigger

by Renne



Category: Fringe
Genre: 2x04, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Episode Tag, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-16
Updated: 2011-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-19 11:32:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/200378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Renne/pseuds/Renne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Olivia's grief makes her introspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Olivia pulls the trigger

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted on LJ [here](http://futureperfect.livejournal.com/874615.html).

Olivia pulls the trigger.

 

In the days following Charlie's death, Olivia grieves for a man she didn't know she'd already lost.

They bury the shapeshifter like he's the real Charlie, putting him in the ground like that's where he belongs in lieu of the real thing. Olivia wonders where her Charlie is, where he ended, what the shapeshifter did with him after stealing his life. And as she kneels before (his) gravestone, she wonders if they'll ever know.

Backtracking the shapeshifter's steps, they should - in theory - be able to find where the shapeshifter started and Charlie left off, but when she tries to put that together in her mind herself all she can remember is the pain of the accident, and the holes that were in her memories, and the race to put her brain back together to find out what William Bell told her before it was too late.

But Olivia still blames herself for losing him, as if there was something she missed that could have saved him, the way she completely missed that her friend had become a fraud.

 

(There's a little self-loathing in that thought as she wonders if she really is that easy to dupe by the ones she loves; she made her peace with John, who loved her, but betrayed them all to his own end. Charlie was killed, replaced by a imposter and she never even noticed. Maybe she's really that gullible, maybe she's blinded by love, maybe she's so self-involved, maybe, maybe, maybe--)

 

In the days following Charlie's death, Olivia thinks over and over _'I put four bullets into him. I killed him. Charlie. I killed him.'_

She can't dissociate the shapeshifter Charlie from hers, because it was him, it was his face-voice-body, and she killed him.

Broyles says no, it wasn't her Charlie, and Peter (oh, Peter) says no, it wasn't her Charlie, and intellectually she knows no, it wasn't her Charlie and probably hadn't been for a long time, she knows this. She does. But on an emotional level she feels like she'd put three bullets into her Charlie and one in his head and that's a thought she just can't shift.

But it wasn't him and she didn't even know.

How could she not know?

 

In the days following Charlie's death, Olivia finally realises what he meant to her.

He was her friend, her partner, and she loved him, but she knew that already. No, what she never realised was just how much. Not like John Scott, all passion and lust and need, but something steady and strong, and god, how she could have loved him.

She knows that as things were, it could never have happened, but if there had been a chance... she wonders if she would have tried. If they could have tried. She wonders if Charlie loved her the same way, could have loved her the same way given the chance. If not for John and if not for Peter and if not for Fringe Division and Walter and parasites and shapeshifters and all the other fucked up things they've had to deal with.

Oh, there were more stumbling blocks than that, but still.

She wonders because wondering never killed anyone, because wondering (now) can never hurt anyone, because Charlie, her Charlie, is gone and he's never coming back.

 

Olivia pulls the trigger.


End file.
